Tiny Raven

Dionys sat on the shoreline, watching the waves of the Myrian ebb and flow.

He didn’t turn when Odrian’s sandals scuffed the sand behind him. Dionys kept his gaze on the sea, even as his shoulders lost the slightest edge of tension. Enough to betray that he knew exactly who was approaching.

Odrian flopped down beside him with a dramatic sigh, offering the wineskin. Dionys took it without a word, drinking deeply before passing it back.

For a long moment, there was only the crash of waves and Stella’s distant, off-key humming.

“So,” Odrian broke the silence. “Our thief is terrifying.”

He said it lightly. Testing.

Dionys exhaled sharply through his nose, something between a scoff and agreement.

“Our,” he repeated, tone flat but with an undercurrent Odrian knew how to read all too well.

Not denial, not protest. Simple acknowledgment.

“She’ll outlive us all out of sheer spite,” he said after a beat of silence.

Odrian hummed in agreement, taking a slow sip of wine before speaking carefully.

“For someone with no military training, she handles pain remarkably well.”

Dionys scowled at the waves, his fingers tightening around the wineskin.

“Walus,” he muttered, the name tasting like poison on his tongue. “He dies slow.”

Odrian didn’t flinch. He just took the wineskin back and rolled it between his palms, his gaze distant.

“Slow seems generous,” he murmured as he stared at the grey-green waves. “I’m thinking creative.”

Dionys exhaled, forcing calm into his bones.

“She called him an asshole while bleeding out,” he said after a moment. “I like her.”

Odrian took a long sip from the wineskin, letting the salt-crusted air fill the silence between them. When he spoke, his voice was soft, stripped of its theatrical edge.

“I like her too,” he admitted, staring out at the grey line where the sea met sky. “Which is terribly inconvenient, considering we have exactly five days left.”

He passed the skin back, finally meeting Dionys’s gaze. The false dawn painted his face in shades of violet and iron.

“Five days to convince Nomaros that our bleeding, stubborn, rock-hoarding paramour is worth more to Aurel’s war effort than as a peace offering to Aurelis and his Formicari. Five days to prove that keeping her—and Stella—isn’t just sentiment, but strategy.”

Dionys exhaled through his nose. His fingers flexed, curled into fists, before he deliberately loosened them again.

“We make her invaluable,” he said, his voice grim but certain. “She knows Tharon street networks, speaks their dialects—Mother Tongue, whatever that nightmare is—understands Walus’s command structure from the inside. She stole his seal, Odrian. You understand what that means—she’s already done more damage to the Tharon command than our scouts have managed in six months.”

He turned to face Odrian fully, the grey light catching the hard set of his jaw.

“She’s already proven she can infiltrate our camps undetected. Imagine what she could do with training. With resources.”

Odrian took the wineskin, rolling it between his palms as the false dawn painted his face. His voice carried the velvet-dangerous lilt he reserved for conspiracy and war council.

“I understand exactly what it means,” he murmured, eyes fixed on the grey line where sea met sky. “It means our thief didn’t just pick pockets—she decapitated a command structure and delivered the head to our tent still bleeding.”

He took a long drink before fixing Dionys with a gaze sharp enough to cut marble.

“Five days isn’t enough to teach her everything, but it’s sufficient to demonstrate potential. We leak that we have the seal. Let Walus’s officers know their Butcher is signing orders with spit and terror while we hold his legitimacy in our hands. We feed the rot in his ranks until he chokes on it.”

He shifted, sand crunching beneath him, and his voice dropped to something raw and unguarded.

“But let’s not pretend this is strictly strategy, Dionys. She sewed herself up with thread and still found the breath to mock my singing. I’m not surrendering her—or Stella—to anyone. Not Nomaros, not Aurelis, and certainly not back to the bastard who welded bronze to her ankle.”

He passed the skin back, his jaw set.

“So. We have five days to convince a council of jackals that Alessia and Stella are the keys to winning this war. If they don’t agree?” A smile flashed, feral and bright. “Then we take our people and burn the bridges behind us. I’ve always preferred Othara’s coastline, anyway.”

Silence stretched between them again, charged but comfortable. The sort of silence that could only exist between men who had fought side by side for years.

A silence of gaps and implications.

Then, because someone had to address the other looming truth, Odrian added, “… She doesn’t know. About us.”

Their history. The quiet thing that still lingered between them, even now.

Dionys took the wineskin, his fingers brushing Odrian’s as he pulled it close. He didn’t drink immediately, just stared out at the grey waves, exhaustion etched deep in the lines of his face.

“She knows what matters,” he said finally. “That’s enough for now.”

He took a long drink, the wine sharp against the salt air, then passed it back with a grunt.

“As for the rest…” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes cutting to Odrian with something fierce and complicated. History and present and future all tangled together. “We’ve survived worse. We’ll survive this. Five days. We keep her safe—both of them—and we figure out the rest after Nomaros is handled.”

Odrian glanced sideways, a ghost of his usual smirk playing at his lips. “I’ve already drafted three contingency plans.”

Dionys finally turned his head to look fully at Odrian, one eyebrow quirking.

“Only three?” The dryness in his voice was almost teasing. “You’re slacking.”

Odrian snorted, sharp and genuine, before dragging a hand down his face, smearing away the exhaustion of another sleepless night.

“Three comprehensive plans, you insufferable perfectionist. The other seventeen are half-formed scribbles on wax tablets I’ve already melted down in shame.”

He took a long drink from the wineskin, letting the salt air fill the silence between them before passing it back, his fingers lingering for just a heartbeat against Dionys’s knuckles.

“Besides,” he added, his voice dropping to something softer, “since when have I ever needed more than one good plan when you’re standing beside me to execute it?”

He turned his gaze back to the water, watching the grey waves turn to gold as the sun breached the horizon. “We’ve survived Nomaros’s tantrums before. We’ve survived wars and sieges and gods know what else. We’ll survive this too. All of us. With or without the Council’s blessing.”

A pause and then quieter still: “She’s worth it. They both are. Some costs are worth paying.”

A comfortable silence settled between them. No need for words when their shared understanding already ran so deep. The waves continued their rhythmic crash against the shore, and Stella’s groggy demands for breakfast were a balm to the weight of their thoughts.

Odrian finally tipped the wineskin back, savoring the last of it before setting it aside. He glanced at Dionys, studying the hard lines of his profile, the way the fading sunlight caught on his scars.

“She called you a pillow, you know,” he said, his voice laced with mischief. “Said you were unreasonably comfortable.”

Dionys scowled at the grey waves, his jaw tight. “She was delirious,” he grunted. “Probably mistook me for a pile of sandbags.” He paused, glancing sideways with a flat stare. “And she weighs less than my spear. Hardly a testament to my ‘comfort’ that I didn’t notice.”

Odrian barked out a laugh, sharp and delighted, before leaning back on his elbows in the sand, utterly unconcerned with the damp seeping into his tunic.

“Oh, please. You held her for six hours, Dio. Six. I counted. You didn’t even shift when your arm went numb.”

Dionys let the rare nickname hang in the air between them before he exhaled sharply. His scowl deepened, fingers tightening reflexively around the wineskin before he forced them to loosen.

“Someone had to keep her upright after Askarion finished stitching. Gravity and foul humors, you know how it is.” He passed the skin back with more force than necessary, sand gritty between his palms. “And my arm didn’t go numb. It was… tactically positioned for optimal blood flow.”

Grudgingly, barely audible over the crash of waves, he added, “… She’s warm. When she sleeps. Not like a soldier—tense, ready to wake. She just… stops. Like she finally trusts the ground won’t swallow her.”

He stared hard at the horizon, as if the rising sun personally offended him. “Stella does the same. Curled into her side like a cat, completely defenseless. Didn’t even stir when I moved.”

Silence stretched between them, charged and fragile.

“I’m keeping them,” Dionys said. 

Odrian went very still for a heartbeat before the corner of his mouth twitched upward into the familiar, wicked smirk.

“Should we tell her you purred when she cuddled into you?”

Dionys stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“To throw you into the sea,” Dionys said with the same tone he used to discuss the weather.

Odrian cackled, scrambling to his feet as Dionys grabbed for him, both of them stumbling like boys, uncaring of dignity, uncaring of anything beyond the reckless, stupid joy they both felt.

It was something they had both forgotten.

They ended up wrestling like teenagers, half-tripping in the shallows.

Odrian surfaced, laughing, saltwater streaming down his face, chiton plastered to his chest. He lunged for Dionys’s ankle, missed, and went down again with a spectacular splash that soaked them both.

When he came up sputtering, he grabbed Dionys by the belt and hauled him close, breathing hard against the chill of the Myrian.

“Fabulous,” he wheezed, grinning like a madman, his fingers tangling in the soaked fabric of Dionys’s tunic. “Truly. The Council of Kings would be horrified to see their vanguard and their spymaster brawling in the surf like dockyard children.”

He leaned closer, his voice dropping to something fierce and unguarded, quiet against the crash of the waves.

“Then perhaps they should look elsewhere.”

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

When the sun had fully risen, and the camp was in motion, Stella knelt outside the tent, stacking her rocks into towers and humming, her face still sticky from the honey she’d had on her breakfast barley porridge.

Alessia, still wearily recovering, was awake, watching Stella’s shadow through the tent canvas. She raised an eyebrow as Odrian and Dionys ducked into the tent, chitons damp and sand in their hair.

“…Did you two try to fight Poseidon?”

Odrian, still dripping seawater and grinning like a man possessed, flopped gracelessly onto the nearest bedroll.

“Worse,” he declared solemnly. “We played.”

“I was attempting to drown him,” Dionys said. “He refused to cooperate.”

“Uncle Dio pushed Uncle Ody into the ocean,” Stella called from where she was playing outside the tent. “For bein’ annoying.”

“Uncle Ody,” Odrian repeated, as if tasting the title, his grin widening despite the sand plastered to his cheek. “I see my tormentor has already poisoned the jury.”

He peeled his sodden chiton away from his chest with a theatrical grimace, flinging a droplet of seawater toward Dionys with a flick of his hair. “For the record, I was allowing the drowning. It’s called tactical immersion, and your Uncle Dio is simply jealous that I possess superior buoyancy.”

He flopped back onto the bedroll and stretched his arms wide, sand crunching beneath him. “Also, Poseidon would have been gentler. That brute tried to feed me to a crab.”

Dionys reached into his sodden belt pouch, producing a small oilcloth bundle that had somehow survived his swim. He tossed it onto the bedroll beside Alessia’s hand.

“Olives,” he said, shaking seawater from his hair like a wet dog. “Salty.”

He cut his eyes toward Odrian, deadpan and unrepentant. “He talks too much. Drowning seemed efficient.”

Alessia stared at the olives. Then at Dionys. Then at the olives again. Slowly, she picked one up, examining it like she had never seen one before, and then popped it into her mouth with a solemn nod.

“Still good.”

Dionys grunted, something between acknowledgment and dry amusement, before dragging a hand through his salt-stiffened hair. He settled onto a dry patch of ground near the bedroll. Close enough to be within arm’s reach, far enough not to crowd. “Seawater enhances the flavor.”

His gaze flicked to her ankle, to the shackle visible where her chiton had ridden up, before deliberately returning to her face.

“How’s the wound?”

Alessia popped another olive into her cheek, chewing thoughtfully as she shifted to test the pull of the stitches under her ribs. The movement made her wince, but she masked it with a crooked grin.

“Hurts less than yesterday.” Her gaze flicked down to her ankle, then back up to his sand-plastered hair with a faint smirk. “Been through worse than a little stabbing, believe me.” She gestured vaguely at his dripping chiton. “You’re the one who looks like he lost a fight with the tide. At least my wounds weren’t from a self-inflicted bathing accident.”

Dionys huffed, flicking a clump of wet sand from his tunic with a look of profound resignation. “Wasn’t an accident. I was trying to drown him. The fool just floats.”

He crouched down, elbows on his knees, dripping onto the rushes. His gaze locked onto hers, sharp and assessing, catching the tightness around her eyes she tried to hide. “Don’t lie to me. You’re wincing every time you shift.”

He extended his hand, offering another olive from the damp cloth, his fingers rough and salt-crusted. When she took it, his thumb brushed the back of her knuckles, just once, before he pulled back.

“If you tear those stitches because you’re too busy mocking my hair, I’ll know. And I’ll tell Stella her precious rocks are actually bird eggs.” He stared at her with deadpan silence. “She’ll sit on them until they hatch.”

Alessia nearly choked on an olive as she laughed at the sudden image. She swallowed hard, pressing a hand to her side as the movement pulled at the stitches, fixing him with a look that was half-appalled, half-fond.

“Evil. Truly, deeply evil. When they failed to hatch, she would hold a funeral for every single rock, and then she’d make me lead the procession while she sang a dirge.” She popped another olive into her mouth, chewing thoughtfully as she eyed his sand-crusted hair.

She shifted gingerly, testing her limits, and gave him a sharp-edged grin that didn’t quite hide the exhaustion in her eyes. “Besides, if I’m going to deal with you two acting like children—” she flicked a bit of seaweed from his shoulder “—and apparently floating like corks in the Myrian, I need to be at full strength. Someone has to remember this humiliation for later use.”

Her gaze dropped to his hand resting near her knee, then back up to his face, her voice dropping into something softer. “And… thanks. For the olives. Even if they taste like brine and poor decisions.”

Odrian sat up fully, wringing a stream of water from his chiton with a grimace. “For the record, those were liberated from Nomaros’s personal stores. The salt? That’s just… vintage.”

He reached out and gently plucked a stray bit of seaweed from her blanket, his voice dropping to something rough and genuine. “Stella’s already planning her funeral procession for the rocks. I’d hate to disappoint her by having to host two ceremonies.”

Alessia snorted, nearly choking on the olive again, and clutched her side with a hiss that she quickly turned into a smirk.

“Don’t worry about my stitches, King. I’ve survived worse than a little saltwater and olive brine.” She popped another olive into her cheek, chewing thoughtfully as she glanced toward the tent flap where Stella’s humming drifted in, off-key and sweet.

“And anyway, I can’t die before I teach Stella how to properly pick a lock. She’s got the fingers for it, just needs the patience.”

 “You owe me for liberating these olives from Nomaros’s stores. I intend to collect—with interest.” Odrian’s grin cut sudden and sharp.

Dionys shifted, sand crunching under his knees, and extended a hand. Not to help her up, but to press two fingers against her pulse at the wrist, checking her heart rate.

“Stop moving,” he grunted, though his grip was careful, almost feather-light against her bruised skin.

He glanced toward the tent flap and Stella’s humming, then back to Alessia with a look that was all hard edges with a soft center.

“Rest. I’ll watch the perimeter. And if Odrian tries to ‘collect’ anything else from you before you’re healed, I’ll drown him properly.”

Alessia looked between them before popping the last olive into her mouth and chewing with deliberate slowness, as if contemplating the logistics of murdering them both.

“I’m not porcelain.” Her fingers curled, almost beckoning. “Help me up.”

Dionys caught her wrist before she could push herself upright. His grip was firm, careful in the way of a man who knew exactly how fragile healing flesh could be.

“Good, porcelain shatters,” he said, his voice low and level. His other hand pressed flat against her shoulder, holding her down with pressure that brooked no argument despite the care in his touch.

He released her wrist to grab the spare bedroll behind him, shoving it against her back to prop her up without letting her engage the muscles under her stitches.

He picked up the empty oilcloth, folding it with methodical precision.

The tent flap burst open with all the subtlety of a summer storm, Stella’s dark curls bouncing as she scrambled inside. Clutched in both hands was a flat, grey stone veined with white quartz. A prized specimen, judging by the way she presented it like a royal offering.

“Mama, no,” she announced immediately, zeroing in on Alessia’s propped-up position with the fierce disappointment of a tiny general whose orders had been ignored. She stomped over, sandy bare feet leaving prints on the rushes, and thrust the rock toward Alessia’s lap. “You’re s’posed to be resting. Uncle Dio said. Uncle Ody said. I said.”

She wedged herself between Dionys and the bedroll, pressing her small back against Alessia’s uninjured side as if physically preventing her from rising. The rock was shoved into Alessia’s hand with insistent, sticky fingers.

“This is Lieutenant Smoothstone,” she declared with a solemn nod. “He’s on guard duty now. If you try to get up, he’ll bite. Hard.”

She glared up at Odrian, then Dionys, as if this was all their fault, before patting Alessia’s knee with grim finality. “Five days. That’s the rule. Or General Stonebelly throws you in the dungeon.”

Alessia winced as Stella wedged herself against her side, not from pain but from the sheer force of her conviction. Her hand closed around the quartz-veined rock, feeling its weight, its rough edges. She looked down at her dark curls, the way she had planted herself like a tiny, immovable fortress between Alessia and the rest of the world.

“Lieutenant Smoothstone, huh?” She rolled the stone between her palms, arching a brow at the seriousness in Stella’s expression. “Sounds like a vicious officer. A real disciplinarian.”

She glanced up at Odrian and Dionys before looking back at her daughter. The defiance drained out of her like water through a sieve, replaced by something warm and tired and helplessly fond. She settled back against the propped bedroll with a sigh that was half surrender, half amusement.

“Fine. Five days.” She lifted the rock in a mock-salute, addressing it like a commanding officer. “But tell General Stonebelly that if his Lieutenant here fails to keep me entertained, I’m staging a mutiny. And you—” she tapped Stella’s nose with her free hand “—are a tyrant. Worse than both these kings combined.”

She shot a pointed look at the men, her lips quirking despite herself. 

“You two planned this, didn’t you. Warfare via adorable enforcers. Very underhanded. I’d be impressed if I wasn’t currently being held captive by a rock and a five-year-old.”

“I confess,” Odrian drawled as he reached into a crate he had liberated earlier, producing another olive that he twirled between his fingers. “The tiny general’s grasp of siege warfare is decisively superior to my own. Dionys, take notes: this is how you actually win a battle. Not with so-called ‘tactical immersion’ but with weaponized affection. Brutal. Efficient. Devoid of mercy.”

He fell to his knees beside the bedroll in a theatrical sprawl, sand dusting his still-damp tunic, and extended the olive toward Alessia. Not throwing it, but offering it palm-up, his fingertips brushing hers as she took it.

“Eat your olive. It’s vintage,” he gestured grandly at the salt-crusted exterior. “Brined in the tears of my enemies and too much Myrian seawater. Dionys claims it ‘enhances the flavor of my questionable life choices.’ Personally, I think he’s just jealous that I floated better than he drowned.”

Dionys exhaled sharply through his nose, flicking a clump of wet sand from his hair. It pelted Odrian’s shoulder with deliberate aim.

“You floated because you’re hollow,” he muttered as he reached to adjust the bedroll behind Alessia with more gentleness than his tone suggested. “Like driftwood. No substance.”

He crouched again and fixed Stella with a look that softened fractionally at the edges. “General Stonebelly approves of your tactical placement. Hold the line.”

To Alessia he dropped his voice to a low, rough rumble. “Eat the olive. Or don’t. But if you get up before Askarion clears you, I’m tying you down with the tent ropes.”

His thumb brushed her ankle before he pulled back, wiping salt from his palms with methodical efficiency. “Three days. Then you can stab someone. Preferably not us.”

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Stella crouched in the wet sand where the waves tickled her toes, and there he was. The most magnificent creature she’d ever seen. It was all armor and wiggly legs, scuttling sideways like it was dancing, with two big claws that clicked together like it was applauding her.

“Hello!” she whisper-shouted, because Alessia said you had to be polite to new friends.

Dionys was two strides behind her, close enough to grab her collar if she lunged, far enough to let her breathe, when she reached for the crab. His boot hit the wet sand with a squelch, and he dropped into a crouch beside her, elbows on his knees, close enough that his shadow fell over both of them.

“Stell,” he growled, not loud enough to scare the crab, but firm enough to freeze her finger mid-air. “That’s not a pet. That’s dinner with legs.”

The crab waved its claws at her like it was issuing a challenge. Dionys narrowed his eyes at it.

“If you pinch her,” he informed the crab, deadly serious, “I’ll boil you in garlic and eat you.”

Stella’s eyes went wide and she gasped loud enough to scare the crab into scuttling sideways a few steps.

“No!” she wrapped both arms around her knees, leaning closer to the crab like she was protecting it from Dionys’s hungry mouth. “You can’t eat Admiral Snip! He’s on our side!”

She looked up at Dionys with her best serious face and pointed at the crab’s wiggly antennae. “He’s guardin’ the beach from bad guys! See? He’s doin’ a stance.”

The crab chose that moment to wave both claws in the air, and Stella gasped again.

“See?! He’s salutin’! That means he’s loyal!”

She reached out and patted Dionys’s knee with her sandy hand, trying to make him understand the gravity of the situation.

“You can’t eat soldiers, Uncle Dio. That’s against the rules. Even Lieutenant Smoothstone says so.” She added, quieter, “… If you’re real hungry, I got some honeycake crumbs in my pocket. But you gotta share with Admiral Snip. He likes crumbs. I can tell.”

Dionys stared at the crab for a long, considering moment, watching its antennae wave like tiny banners. He exhaled through his nose, sharp and controlled, and lowered himself onto the damp sand beside Stella, his knee brushing her shoulder.

“Rules,” he repeated, deadpan. He flicked a glance at the crab, which scuttled closer to Stella’s foot like it understood exactly whose protection it’s under. “Fine. If he’s a soldier, he follows the chain of command. That means he reports to you, and you report to me.”

He reached into his belt pouch, ignoring the way Odrian was definitely laughing into his hand, and produced a fragment of honeycake, slightly crushed from being jostled against his dagger. He broke it in two, holding one piece out to Stella while the other hovered over the crab.

“He gets crumbs,” he dictated, dropping the smaller portion near the crab’s claws with a warning look. “You eat the big piece. And if Admiral Snip forgets his rank and pinches anyone, I’m making him into soup. Soldiers who disobey orders get the pot.”

The crab snatched the crumb and scuttled backward. Dionys nodded, satisfied, and looked down at Stella. “Deal?”

“Deal!” Stella squeaked, and she grabbed Dionys’s big rough hand with both of her sandy ones to shake it officially, like Alessia did when she made bargains.

Then she let go and spun around to face Admiral Snip, putting her hands on her hips like Dionys did when he was being stern.

“Did you hear that, Admiral? You get the crumbs—the little ones—and you gotta be good and not pinch, or else you’re soup and I’ll be real sad and have to cry, and General Stonebelly will be very cross.”

The crab waved its claws again and Stella nodded seriously.

“Good, that’s a salute. That means he understands the rules.”

Odrian was sprawled on a sun-bleached log a few paces back, mending a bridle strap that absolutely didn’t need mending. His gaze kept drifting to the tableau on the shore.

“Don’t look at me,” he called out, raising his hands in mock surrender, the leather strap dangling from his fingers. “I’m merely a witness to this historic diplomatic summit. The very image of a neutral party.”

Stella twisted around to fix him with a look so ferocious he nearly dropped the bridle.

“You’re not neutral, Uncle Ody! You’re the scribe! You gotta write it down that Admiral Snip is off-limits for soup!” She pointed at the crab, which had somehow acquired a small crown of seaweed. “In the books! So nobody forgets!”

Odrian abandoned his pretense of work to saunter down to join them, sand gritting between his toes.

“The books,” he repeated solemnly, pulling a wax tablet from his belt pouch, completely blank. He scratched a few meaningless symbols into the soft surface with his stylus, squinting with theatrical concentration.

“Let it be recorded,” he intoned, pitching his voice like a temple oracle, “that Admiral Snip is exempt from soup-related fates, provided he refrains from pinching superior officers.”

He glanced up at Dionys, trying and failing to smother his grin.

“Is that agreeable, my fellow commander?”

Dionys exhaled through his nose with such long-suffering patience that Odrian burst out laughing, the sound carrying across the Myrian.

“Agreeable,” he muttered.

Then Stella commandeered Odrian’s hand, dragging him toward the water’s edge to search for supplies for Admiral Snip’s barracks.

“Coming, Dio?” Odrian called over his shoulder.

Dionys sighed and followed. Admiral Snip scuttled valiantly at their heels, and Stella’s laughter rang bright as a bell against the grey-green waves.

---

---

Dawn arrived softly. The camp stirred, the usual clamor of soldiers rising from their bedrolls, their armor clanking, voices spilling into the morning air. But within their tent, for now, there was quiet.

Alessia slept, her breathing steady, fever chased into memory. Dionys remained at her back, stoic as ever, his fingers tracing idle patterns on the edge of her chiton.

Stella, still curled against her mother’s side, blinked awake in increments. She stretched like a cat before nuzzling back into the warmth.

Odrian watched them all from his perch near the tent flap. His usual smirk was absent, replaced by something quieter.

The war was still outside.

Nomaros’s shadow still lingered.

But for these few stolen moments, they were safe. They were whole.

They were his.

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Alessia woke when she heard Stella stir. She rubbed her daughter’s back absently, checking to see if she was feverish.

She blinked, remembering the last few moments before she had fallen asleep again.

Calling Dionys a pillow, him pretending to hate it, Odrian being dramatic.

She glanced up and—

Oh.

Dionys was still there behind her, arms looped loosely in a way that suggested he hadn’t moved an inch while she slept. His expression was as unreadable as ever, but there was something almost protective in the way he hadn’t let her slump.

“You’re… you’re still here…?” Alessia said with a sheepish grin. “I figured you would have gotten sick of me drooling on you.”

Dionys didn’t even glance at his damp sleeve. He just arched one brow.

“You weigh less than my spear,” he muttered. “Wasn’t worth the effort of moving.”

Odrian, lurking near the tent flap, nearly choked on the lie.

Dionys shifted just enough to roll his shoulder, subtly testing the stiffness of a limb that had been immobilized for hours.

“Also, you would’ve whined.”

Alessia blinked at him, speechless. Then with a slow, knowing smirk, she leaned her head back against his shoulder, testing him.

“Oh, so that’s why,” she said, her voice dripping with exaggerated understanding. “Because I would’ve whined. Not because you care or anything.”

She sighed theatrically.

Dionys’s jaw clenched just slightly. His usual stoicism wavering for a split second before he slammed it back into place like a shield wall.

“Obviously,” he grunted.

Odrian failed to stifle a snort.

“Naturally,” he chimed in. “Our beloved Dionys is known for his selflessness. Just yesterday I saw him personally carrying three wounded soldiers and a stray puppy back to camp, purely out of disinterest.”

Dionys leveled them both with a glare.

“You,” he growled at Odrian, “are unbearable.” Then to Alessia, his voice dropping into something like warning, “And you are incredibly heavy.”

His arms, still looped securely around her, begged to differ.

“Ah, the truth comes out,” Alessia said as she glanced down at herself. “You’re trapped beneath my impressive weight.”

Dionys’s nostrils flared as his glare intensified.

“Crushed.”

The word was flat, and yet his grip didn’t loosen.

Odrian kicked lazily at Dionys’s foot.

“You poor, powerless man.”

Dionys exhaled through his nose, long-suffering, and didn’t dignify Odrian’s theatrics with a response. Instead he glanced down at Alessia.

“Are you done?”

“Never,” Alessia said with a grin. “But I’ll grant you a reprieve for now.”

Dionys rolled his shoulders like he was finally free of a great burden, his hands lingering just a moment too long as he helped ease Alessia upright.

“Finally, some mercy for the weary warrior,” Odrian said. His smirk softened as he glanced at Alessia, searching for any sign of lingering pain or fever.

He only found her. Grinning, stubborn, and alive.

Odrian’s smile softened slightly further before he clapped his hands together, the vulnerability already shuttered away.

“Now! Who wants breakfast?”

Stella was awake in an instant, her hand shooting up like an eager recruit’s.

Odrian left the tent, only to return a moment later balancing a wooden platter piled with stolen luxury.

“Only the finest,” he teased as he lowered the tray toward Alessia and Stella. “Fresh bread, salted fish, olives—even a pomegranate… if you promise not to stab me over it.”

“I’ll stab you if you don’t give it to me,” Alessia said with a slightly feral grin.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had pomegranate. It had been years.

Odrian threw back his head and laughed as he stood back up.

“Noted,” he wheezed, clutching his chest for dramatic effect. “Your pomegranate, Your Highness.”

He didn’t quite escape the tent before Alessia caught the way his grin lingered. Soft at the edges, like sunlight through storm clouds.

“Dionys,” his voice floated back, slightly muffled. “Restrain your bloodthirsty paramour before she redecorates my tent with my internal organs—”

Alessia choked on the water she was drinking, feeling the tips of her ears burn pink.

Dionys, who had been resolutely ignoring the entire exchange while checking Stella’s rock collection, went still at Odrian’s words. He turned to stare at the tent flap, slowly, as though contemplating whether to strangle the king with it.

“… Paramour,” he repeated, voice flat as a dull blade.

Then, with a pointed glare at Alessia, he grabbed the nearest object and chucked it at Odrian’s retreating back.

The linen bandages fell pathetically short.

Alessia snorted.

“Truly a devastating display of force. I tremble at your might.”

Stella, mouth full of bread and pomegranate pips, giggled and flopped back against Alessia’s uninjured side.

“You know, paramour is very generous for someone who just called me a burden,” Alessia said as she tilted her head and pitched her voice to carry.

Dionys’s look was nothing short of withering.

“You drooled,” he said. “On my sword arm.”

She opened her mouth to retort and he leaned in, close enough that his breath stirred the hair at her temple as he dropped his voice to a whisper.

“And if you want to be my paramour, say it plainly. I won’t play word games with kings or thieves.”

Alessia went still, so still that Stella tilted her head up to check if her mother was okay. She could feel the warmth of Dionys’s breath at her temple, the weight of his arm bracketing her ribs, the solid reality of him after hours spent sleeping against him.

Her heart hammered in a way that had nothing to do with her injuries.

Say it plainly.

Words fail her, caught in her throat like fish bones. She had spent so long surviving on silence and half-truths that speaking plain tasted foreign. Dangerous.

“Plainly?” Her voice came out rough, quieter than she intended. She swallowed hard, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on Stella’s back. “I want…”

She hesitated. The words were there, scrambled, terrified, and true, but they felt too big for her mouth suddenly.

“I want you to still be here tomorrow,” she finally breathed, not quite meeting his eyes. “When I wake up. Even if I’m drooling on you again. Especially then.”

She forced a wry smile, trying to claw back some of her armor. “But if you tell anyone I admitted to wanting something, I’ll deny it and stab you with a sewing needle. Plain enough?”

Dionys went still against her, his arm tightening around her ribs to anchor, his fingers pressing once into the fabric of her chiton.

“Plain enough,” he rumbled, voice gravel-rough and unshakable. He didn’t look at her, staring instead at the tent wall, but his jaw had softened. “I’ll be here. Drool and all.”

A beat, then quieter, “Won’t tell a soul. Your secrets are safe here.”

His other hand lifted, briefly, to hover near Stella’s hair. Not quite touching, just a silent canopy of protection. Then he settled back.

Solid.

Present.

Staying.

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

The morning air outside the tent carried the bite of early winter, sharp enough to sting the lungs but clean compared to the closeness of canvas and wool and the metallic tang of spilled blood. Alessia breathed it in carefully, mindful of her ribs, and took her first unassisted step beyond the flap.

She had not slept in sunlight in days.

The sentry posted three paces from the entrance snapped to attention. Not with hostility, but with the oiled precision of a mechanism engaging. His spear remained upright, vertical and ceremonial, but his free hand lifted in a gesture that was half-halt, half-salute.

“Hold there. Name yourself and where you’re headed.”

Alessia froze. The motion instinctive, primal. A prisoner hearing keys turn. Her shoulders drew inward, hunching protectively around her wounds, and her chin dipped until she was staring at the dust between the sentry’s sandals rather than his face.

She had practiced the posture for years in Ellun.

Eyes down. Voice soft. No threat.

“Just… taking air,” she murmured. “Near the river. Only a few paces.”

The sentry did not lower his hand. His gaze flickered over her, assessing her chiton, the pallor of her cheeks, the bandages visible at her throat. His expression remained professionally blank, but his stance shifted to block the path more solidly.

“Authorization?”

“I don’t—” Her voice cracked. She wet her lips, tasting copper and fear. “I don’t have a seal. Or a chit. I didn’t know I needed…”

“All personnel require escort clearance beyond the medical perimeter.” He spoke as if reciting from a tablet, uninflected and immutable. “Does the King of Othara know you are mobile? Does Commander Dionys?”

Does your master know you’re wandering?

The unspoken echo of the question made her stomach twist. She had heard that tone before. Not the cruel cadence of Walus’s punishments, but something worse: The bureaucratic indifference of a system that classified her as property to be logged and tracked. The sentry wasn’t being cruel. He was being correct.

And that correctness felt like bars clicking shut.

“I can go back,” Alessia whispered. The compliance was immediate, automatic. A conditioned response that made her want to claw at her own skin. “I’m sorry, I’ll go back inside.”

She turned, too fast, her gait hitching as her injured ankle twisted on uneven ground. She didn’t cry out.

She had learned not to make noise when retreating.

Dionys rounded the corner of the supply tent at a brisk pace, carrying a fresh waterskin and a length of linen for bandage changes. Then he saw her.

Retreating.

Her shoulders were curled inward like broken wings, chin tucked so low he could only see the crown of her head and the tremor in her hands. The sentry stood at attention, spear vertical, expression professionally blank.

Correct.

Dionys stopped dead.

The waterskin hit the ground with a dull thud.

“Stand down,” he snapped at the sentry. His voice carried the razor edge of command, though he knew the man was only following orders. “Return to your post. Now.”

The sentry saluted and withdrew without question, boots crunching away into the morning bustle.

Dionys didn’t move toward Alessia immediately. He watched her frozen posture and felt something cold settle in his stomach.

He’d seen that stance before.

In prisoners. In the broken men sent back from Ellun’s interrogation chambers.

They’d built her a cage. Polished the bars with their good intentions.

He stepped closer, careful to make noise so she knew exactly where he was. He stopped just inside her peripheral vision, not blocking her path. When he spoke, his voice was lower than usual. Rough.

“…He was following orders. Standard security.” A pause. His jaw tightened. “I should have told them. Should have put your name on the damned roster myself.”

He extended his hand, not to grab but to offer, palm up like a truce. “River’s this way, if you still want air.”

He didn’t apologize. Didn’t say we didn’t mean to trap you.

The words would be ash in his mouth.

Alessia stared at his hand for a moment. Not a command, not a trap, just an offer. It took longer than it should have for her brain to catalog it as safe, to override the screaming instinct that said hands grab, hands hurt, hands pin you down when you try to run.

She took it.

Dionys’s palm was rough, callused from spear-work and sword-work and whatever else kings did when they weren’t propping up half-dead thieves like convenient cushions. She gripped tighter than she meant to, fingers digging in, grounding herself in the reality of bone and skin and choice.

“Roster,” she said finally, her voice steadier than she felt. Her ankle twisted again on a loose stone, and she stumbled, catching herself against his side with a hiss of pain.

But she didn’t let go of his hand.

“Sounds very formal. Very Aurean.”

She forced a smirk, though her throat was tight. The river was close now, she could smell the wet stone and the algae.

“So, what am I, then?” she asked, aiming for light but landing somewhere near brittle. “Prisoner? Patient? Odrian’s latest indiscretion?” She tilted her head, watching Dionys’s profile as they walked. “Or just… Alessia?”

The name felt foreign in her mouth. Just a name. Not Skia. Not ‘that Tharon bitch.’ Not ‘Walus’s toy.’ Just… Alessia.

Her fingers twitched in his grip. She didn’t pull away.

“And you,” she added, softer now, watching the way he shortened his stride to match her limping half-step, “don’t have to shepherd me. I know the river’s this way. I’m not going to—”

She almost said escape. Almost said steal your boat and vanish.

She settled for: “—drown myself in three inches of current. I’ve got too many stitches to ruin now.”

Dionys didn’t look down at their joined hands, but his thumb shifted, brushing once against her knuckles in a scuff of skin that might have been reassurance, might have been grounding.

He didn’t let go.

“Just Alessia,” he grunted, voice low and gravel-rough, scraped raw by the morning air. He kept his gaze forward, on the path, but his periphery tracked every twitch of her posture, every hitch in her gait. His stride stayed deliberately shortened to match her limp, his bulk angled to block the wind. “No roster for that. No seal.”

When she stumbled, his arm was already there. Not grabbing, simply bracing. A solid pillar against her side that held steady until she found her footing. He didn’t comment on the stumble. He just waited, patient as stone, until she was stable.

“I’m not shepherding,” he muttered finally. His jaw flexed, the muscle ticking. “Escort.”

The river grew closer, audible now, the sound of water over stone that made her tense. He noticed, and his grip tightened fractionally.

“You’re unsteady. Ankle’s swollen. You tear those stitches, Askarion will carve strips off my hide.” Then quieter, almost an admission, gruff and stripped bare, “And you’d bleed. Again.”

He glanced down at her, just a flicker of grey eyes in a weathered face. “So. Escort. Until you don’t need one.”

Not can’t leave. Not won’t let her. Just until she didn’t need one. A limit. A promise. A door held open, if she chose to walk through it.

He stopped at the river’s edge, still holding her hand, and gestured with his chin toward a flat rock worn smooth by water.

“Sit. Before you fall.”

She stared at the rock like it might bite her. Sitting meant admitting she was tired, and admitting that felt too much like admitting she was trapped, even if Dionys just performed verbal gymnastics to avoid calling her a prisoner.

“Just Alessia,” she repeated, testing the weight of it on her tongue. It was lighter than she expected. Less sharp than Skia, less bitter than Thief, less broken than all the other names she’d worn like manacles. “No seal. No title. Sounds… boring.”

She sat, her knees buckling the last few inches faster than she meant them to. She caught herself with her free hand braced against the stone, cold and slick under her palm. The river was right there, churning, and her stomach lurched at the sound.

She squeezed Dionys’s hand harder, just for a second, grounding herself in bone and callus rather than memory.

“Escort,” she said, looking up at hi with a smirk that felt stretched too thin over her teeth. “Very proper. Very heroic. Next you’ll be wrapping me in blankets and forbidding me from walking anywhere alone.”

Her ankle throbbed in time with her pulse, hot and swollen agains the manacle’s rub. She should let go of his hand.

She didn’t.

Her fingers stayed tangled with his, a lifeline she was too exhausted to be embarrassed about.

“How long until I don’t need one?” she asked, quieter now. The river mist clung to her eyelashes. She blinked it away. “The stitches, I mean. Askarion’s going to want me upright and useful before Nomaros’s time limit is up. I need to be functional.”

She didn’t say I need to run if I have to. Didn’t say I need to know I can grab Stella and vanish without needing a permit.

Dionys heard it anyway, in the space between her breaths.

“Odrian probably thinks I’m already planning to steal his boat,” she added, deflecting. She looked at the water rather than him. “He’s right, by the way. It’s a very nice boat. Stealing it would be rude of me, though. I’d have to leave a thank-you note.”

Her voice cracked on the last word. She was tired.

The river spray misted between them, fine and cold, clinging to Dionys’s beard like dew. He didn’t look at the water. Instead, he watched Alessia’s face. The way her jaw tightened when her ankle twisted, the deliberate slowness of her blinking.

Exhaustion.

Pain.

The stubborn refusal to let either show.

He’d met soldiers who broke faster.

“Odrian’s boat,” he said, voice pitched low enough to cut under the river’s rush, “draws four feet. Too shallow for the estuary this time of year. You’d run aground before you cleared the harbor mouth.”

Not you can’t. Just you’d fail.

He crouched beside her. Not kneeling, not sitting, just lowering himself to her level with the rough grace of a man who spent more time in dirt than chairs. His hand stayed in hers, the angle awkward, but he didn’t pull away. Didn’t comment on the sweat of her palm, or the tremor of her fingers.

“Thirteen days,” he said. “For the stitches to hold firm. Twelve, if you don’t tear them ‘being functional.’”

He let that hang, watching her profile.

“Boat’s useless without a crew. And the wood’s rotten below the waterline. Patched twice with rawhide.” He paused, his thumb tracing the back of her hand once, barely perceptible. “But the northern pass? Past the salt flats? Dry most of the year. No sentries. Fewer questions.”

He looked at her, the way she held his hand like a weapon she couldn’t bear to drop, and thought of the men he’d known with the same hollow look behind their eyes, the same readiness to flinch.

“Not saying you need it,” he added, gruff. “Saying you’ll have options. When you’re ready.”

Not if. When.

He reached into his belt pouch with his free hand and withdrew a clay marker. Stamped with his own signet, the boar of Kareth. He pressed it into her palm, folding her fingers over it.

“Show this. Most of the patrols are mine. They’ll let you pass, or they answer to me.”

He finally looked at the water, the churning grey surface that made her knuckles white.

“Not a prisoner,” he said, quieter now. The words scraped from him like they cost something. “Not an indiscretion. Just… Alessia. With a key to the gate.”

He stood, knees popping, but he didn’t release her hand. He just waited, solid and patient, a wall against the wind and the river-sound.

“Sit,” he repeated. “Breathe. Then we’ll go back.”

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

Alessia walked to the shoreline with Stella that evening.

She smiled as Stella wandered the shore, picking up shells and disturbing hermit crabs, completely enamored by the small creatures.

And completely distracted.

She was amazed at how well Stella was doing so close to the water. Alessia herself was afraid of the ocean, a fear she had passed on to Stella, or so she thought. But here Stella was, brave and confident as the waves kissed her toes.

Alessia looked down at Queen Dottie in her hands, who she was mending once again. Truthfully, she needed to find new fabric to replace all of the doll’s limbs, which were more patchwork and darning than original, but she hadn’t had time to scavenge for them.

Dionys found her there, something in him refusing to let either of them out of his sight for long.

Old habits. New fears.

He didn’t intrude. He leaned against a weather-worn post nearby, his arms crossed, watching the way Stella giggled as a crab scuttled over her toes.

She didn’t scream, didn’t flinch. Just watched, fascinated.

After a moment, Dionys pushed off the post and crouched beside Alessia, close enough that their shoulders brushed. Not so close that he crowded her. His gaze flicked to the doll, then back to the sea.

“She’s not scared,” he said, a quiet observation wrapped in something like awe.

Alessia looked up with a smile and a nod before returning to her mending.

“She loves the sea, she just doesn’t know it yet,” she said. “I’m glad she’s not afraid.

Dionys watched the waves a moment longer before murmuring, “She’ll swim someday.”

“Only if someone else teaches her,” Alessia said. “I can’t swim myself.”

Dionys stilled. Blinked. Turned to stare at her. “You don’t—”

He cut himself off, shaking his head as if he were trying to dislodge the sheer absurdity of the claim.

This woman—who had survived Ellun’s streets, had escaped, who had laughed at death itself—couldn’t swim.

His jaw worked before he finally muttered, “Fine. I’ll teach her. After you’ve healed.”

His thumb tapped against the hilt of his dagger, saying the rest.

You’re learning, too.

Alessia laughed.

“I grew up in a city where the nearest sea was the harbor. Not exactly water you want to go diving into,” she explained. It wasn’t the only reason she had never learned, but it was the easiest to talk about.

Dionys stilled at that, just for a heartbeat, before nodding once.

“You’re right, it’s filthy.” Quieter, he added. “This water is clean.”

A gentle offer.

He turned the doll over in his hands, inspecting her handiwork, the careful stitches holding the doll together.

“You’re good at this,” he said. A reluctant but genuine compliment.

“He’s right,” Odrian said as he approached them. His fingers ghosted over the doll’s patched-up arm. “You don’t sew half bad for a self-taught thief.”

“I had an advantage there,” Alessia admitted. “I didn’t teach myself. Not the basics at least. My mother was a seamstress. She taught me.”

“The one who gave you the comb,” Dionys’s fingers still on the doll’s stitches. It wasn’t a question, he remembered her fevered whispers.

“Explains the precision,” he muttered. Then he glanced toward Stella. “Explains her, too.”

Stubborn. Clever. Meticulous.

Currently attempting to negotiate with a seagull for its dinner.

His thumb retraced the doll’s stitches, her stitches, before murmuring, “She taught you well.”

Odrian leaned in. “Tell us about her.”

“She used to tell me stories while she worked,” Alessia murmured, more to herself than to Dionys or Odrian. “She said every stitch was a prayer, a wish for the wearer. Safe travels, warmth, luck…”

She traced a finger down the doll’s repaired arm.

“Never thought I’d be doing the same for my own daughter.”

Dionys’s thumb ghosted over a particularly neat seam in silent acknowledgment before he handed the doll back.

“Good stitches,” he muttered. Then, with a glance at Stella, “Good prayers.”

Stella was now winning her argument with the seagull.

Alessia slid Dottie into her bag, her hand resting on the hilt of the dagger inside. The one she’d kept hidden from them.

She knew she needed to talk to them about it.

She needed to talk about him.

With Stella distracted and the camp far enough away not to overhear, this was the best opportunity she was likely to get.

She was scared. Scared they’d see her and Stella as pawns once they knew who they were. Or worse, that they’d decide she and Stella weren’t worth the trouble following them.

But if they were staying, Dionys and Odrian deserved to know what was hunting them.

Alessia took a deep breath before drawing the dagger from her satchel and setting it on the sand in front of herself, angled so Walus’s wolf’s head sigil was clear.

She knew they’d recognize it. Gods knew it had been burned into the backs of captured scouts often enough.

“I know you have questions,” she said softly. “About Ellun. About… him.”

---

---

Dionys pressed the cool cloth to Alessia’s forehead again and fixed her with a flat stare that was more exhausted than angry.

“When a man holds a woman through a fever, he expects gratitude,” he rumbled, voice scraped raw from disuse. “Maybe tears. A whispered thank you, perhaps.”

He shifted the waterskin from his belt and pressed it closer to her hands, making sure her fingers closed around it before he let go. His thumb brushed her scabbed knuckles where she clawed at the bedrolls during the worst of it.

“What he does not expect,” he continued, leaning back against the tent post, “is to be called a ‘goat-faced son of a dock-whore’ in three separate languages.”

Alessia took a slow, careful sip from the waterskin, her throat raw as pumice, before letting her head fall back against Dionys’s shoulder with an exhausted sigh. The movement sent a dull throb through her stitched ribs, but it was manageable.

“Three?” she rasped. She blinked, slow, heavy-lidded, and turned just enough to fix him with a bleary, defiant stare. “Please. I cursed you in four, minimum. You must’ve missed the dockworker pidgin when you were flinching.”

She shifted slightly, testing the limits of his grip around her ribs, and her fingers twitched toward her satchel where the coins now rested with Odrian. Her tongue felt thick and clumsy, but the words come anyway. Aurean shaped with the faint, melodic lilt of her mother’s voice, the slight roll of the r’s that marked her as not-quite-native, despite the fluency.

“You got the gist, though,” she muttered, drifting toward sleep again despite her best efforts. “Goat faced. Son of a whore. Fairly universal concepts, Dio. Even in the tongue that puts verbs last and thieves first.”

Odrian stared at her while Dionys made a sound like a rockslide trying to laugh.

Three languages? Four? She was rambling in Dockworker Pidgin now, and Odrian had caught the tail end of something that sounded like Tharon but wrong. Backwards. Like someone had taken the grammar and shaken it until the words fell out of order.

“Four,” he repeated, his voice hollow with exhausted disbelief. He dragged his hand down his face. “You cursed us in four languages while Dionys was holding your guts in, and one of them I couldn’t even identify.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the twin coins heavy in his palm. His eyes narrowed with the predatory focus of a strategist scenting an asset he didn’t know he possessed.

“That last one,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, urgent murmur. “The one that sounded like Tharon chewed up and spat out sideways. What was that?”

He glanced at Dionys, seeing his own calculation reflected back. If Alessia knew four, minimum, and one was a cant even he couldn’t recognize…

“You called me a ‘stone-eared mule-son,’” he said, his lips twitching despite everything. “In something that rhymed. It rhymed, Alessia. Tharon doesn’t rhyme like that.”

She let her head loll back against Dionys’s shoulder, her eyelids drooping dangerously low, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward.

“That’s Mother Tongue,” she rasped. She lifted a hand, heavy as lead, and gestured vaguely in the air between them, tracing patterns that meant nothing to them and everything to her. “Street Tharon. Thieves’ cant. We put knives first and verbs last. Subject-object-verb, if you’re being pedantic about grammar.”

She shifted, hissing as her ribs pulled.

Her fingers curled weakly against the bedroll, seeking unconsciously for Stella’s hair, missing and finding only wool.

“Dolos taught me. Said if I learned it proper I could insult a mark’s mother, his lineage, and his livestock in the same breath… and he’d thank me for the poetry while handing over his purse.”

Dionys’s arm tightened around Alessia, just slightly, as his voice dropped to a low growl.

“How old were you?”

“Six, maybe seven,” Alessia said, her voice soft. “He couldn’t have been older than eleven.”

Before either man could respond, Stella shifted again in her sleep, fingers tightening instinctively on Alessia’s clothing.

Then she blinked awake and looked up with sleep-mussed hair to whisper a quiet, hopeful, “Mama?”

“Hey, Starlight,” Alessia said.

Stella’s dark eyes blinked, fuzzy with sleep, still fever-flushed around the edges, and focused on Alessia’s face with the intensity of a hawk spotting prey. For a heartbeat she just stared, as if terrified her mother might dissolve into dream-smoke.

Then she launched.

“MAMA!” She scrambled up, small knees digging into the bedroll, and throwing herself forward to press their foreheads together with a force that was almost a head-butt. Her hands came up to frame Alessia’s cheeks, sticky with honey and sleep-grit, patting frantically as if checking for solidity.

“You’re cold,” she whispered, awed, the word coming out half-sob. “You’re cold and you’re awake and—” she took a deep breath. “You stayed.”

Then she promptly burst into tears.

Dionys shifted, adjusting his arm to cradle them both without jarring Alessia’s stitches. His hand came up, heavy and sure, settling on Stella’s back, thumb tracing slow,  steady circles between her shoulder blades while she wept into her mother’s neck.

“She’s cold,” he rumbled, low and gravel-rough, the observation aimed at no one in particular. His other hand found the waterskin again, pressing it into Alessia’s grip with careful insistence. “Drink.”

He glanced at Odrian, the goat-faced mule-son still hovering with the two coins clutched white–knuckled in his palm.

His gaze dropped back to Stella, watching her tiny shoulders shake, and his jaw tightened with something that wasn’t quite pain.

“Held on,” he said to the girl, two thick fingers brushing damp hair back from her temple to check her temperature. “Both of you. Good.”

He settled back, a wall of scarred leather and wool, holding the line so they could break apart and come back together again.

Alessia let Stella cry for a moment, rubbing gentle circles into her back and murmuring comforting nonsense. Then, as Stella’s tears began to ease, she said, “King Odrian wants me to teach him Mother Tongue.”

The distraction worked. Stella’s tears screeched to a halt as her head whipped toward him, eyes wide and gleaming with mischief.

“You’ll be bad at it,” she informed him with devastating certainty, still hiccuping from crying.

Odrian stared at the child: snot-smeared, defiant, absolutely radiant in her conviction of his inadequacy. He felt something dangerously close to laughter bubbling up from his chest.

“Bad at it?” He pressed a hand to his heart, the motion jostling the twin coins still clutched in his palm, their edges biting into his skin. “I’ll have you know, General, I am fluent in four languages, adept at cipher, and capable of negotiating treaties in three separate dialects of wine-slurred diplomacy.”

He crouched down until he was at eye level with her. His hair was still matted with Alessia’s blood, his eyes hollowed by three days without sleep, but he managed a smirk that was half grimace, half genuine delight.

“If your mother could curse my parentage, my anatomy, and my livestock in a grammar system that defies the gods themselves, then I, as King of Othara, Keeper of the Matching Coins—” he held up his hand, revealing the two bronze owls nested together. “—demand to be at least competent enough to understand when I’m being insulted.”

He tapped her nose with one finger, gentle as a promise.

“Besides. If I’m to be the worst student you’ve ever seen, you’ll simply have to stay awake long enough to correct me. And eat honeycakes.”

Alessia gave him an appraising stare before turning to Stella.

“What do you think? Do you want to show him what he’s in for?”

Stella lit up like a festival lantern, sniffling once more for good measure before clearing her throat with exaggerated gravitas.

“Uncle Ody,” she announced, pointing at him with all the solemnity of a queen bestowing a title. “is a…” she paused before finishing, “… goat cheese.”

It made zero sense.

It was flawlessly delivered in the gnarled, rhythmic cant of Tharos’s slums.

Odrian gasped, genuinely delighted, and immediately turned his widest grin toward Dionys. “Did you hear that? I’ve been blessed!”

He had no idea what it meant.

He would treasure it forever.

Dionys snorted, sharp and sudden, before immediately attempting to school his face back into stoic disapproval.

“You taught her this?” He asked, his voice flat and holding the faintest edge of something like admiration.

Alessia failed to hold back her own quiet, exhausted giggle. Then she realized what Stella said.

Uncle Ody.

She wasn’t sure what to do with the warmth that curled in her chest at the sound of it.

So she let it sit there, quiet and unnamed.

“She came by it naturally, as far as I know,” Alessia told Dionys. “I spent my free time talking to her in Aurean, not Mother Tongue. One day, about a year ago, she came up to me, called me an ‘empty-headed rabbit,’ and demanded breakfast.”

“Empty-headed rabbit,” Dionys repeated, the gravel in his voice rougher than usual despite the twitch at the corner of his mouth. He shifted his arm slightly, where it was still braced around Alessia’s ribs, making sure the pressure supported without pinning. “Appropriate. You’ve got the reflexes for it.”

He looked down at Stella, watching her with hooded eyes. Small, fever-warm, terrifyingly clever. A survivor’s child.

He recognized the type. They bred them hard in Kareth’s mountains.

“You learned the insults first,” he observed, dry as dust. “Smart. Words are cheaper than knives, and they cut deeper when you’re small.”

His thumb traced once over Alessia’s shoulder, checking her temperature, reassuring himself that she was still cool, still real, before he settled back against the tent pole.

The wood dug into his spine, grounding him.

Stella tilted her head, regarding him with the same calculating scrutiny she usually reserved for promising river rocks.

“You’re next,” she declared, the sticky finger she’d pointed at Odrian now swiveling toward the King of Kareth. “You learn too. Then we can all curse the bad men together, and they won’t even know which language is which.”

Dionys grunted low in his chest, a sound that vibrated through his ribs into Alessia’s back where she was still leaning against him. His hand didn’t move from where it was braced across her ribs, fingers spread wide to feel the rise and fall of her breathing.

“Learn,” he rumbled. He fixed Stella with a flat stare that almost hid the warmth in it. “I already know when I’m being called a mule, but if you’re teaching…” he paused, letting his gaze flick to Alessia, then back to Stella. “I’ll learn the words for shield and home.”

He shifted his weight, leather creaking, then reached out with his free hand to offer Stella his smallest finger, hooked and waiting.

“Then we curse the bastards together,” he said, rough and steady. “In every tongue they don’t know.”

Odrian rolled his eyes, but there was no real irritation behind it. Instead, he offered the waterskin to Alessia again.

“Drink,” he insisted, softer. “You lost more blood than you had to spare, And if you actually want to keep shocking us with your vast underworld dialect, you’ll need to stay upright long enough to do it.”

The jest was light, but his gaze lingered, checking for signs of dizziness or weakness, anything that might mean she was still in danger.

Dionys, meanwhile, remained steadfast behind her. His warmth solid and grounding. His presence itself a promise.

We’re here. You made it. Now stay.

Between the teasing, the care, the sheer stubborn refusal to let her slip away, Alessia realized something quiet and undeniable.

They fought for her.

She took the waterskin. Sipped.

And she breathed.

Odrian exhaled, long and slow, as she drank, tension unspooling from his shoulders. His fingers twitched toward her before he thought better of it, settling for a smirk instead.

Then, because the moment was teetering dangerously close to sentiment, he flicked her forehead.

“If you’re quite done flirting with death,” he said. “Maybe we can actually let you rest now.”

Dionys’s arm, still braced around her, tightened briefly. Not enough to hurt, just enough to remind her: You’re here. With us. Safe.

Stella was already half-asleep and stubbornly clinging to Alessia’s side. She mumbled something unintelligible about rocks.

Alessia winced at the flick in mock offense, but she didn’t argue. She leaned back a little heavier against Dionys’s support. Just enough to let him feel the weight of her exhaustion and trust.

“Next time,” she murmured, amusement lacing her words through the rasp of thirst and fatigue. “I’ll try t’ schedule my near-death experiences at a more convenient time.”

Then softer, so low she wasn’t certain Odrian would catch it, she murmured, “Thank you.”

Dionys’s grip tightened another fraction, more acknowledgment than she’d ever get out loud, before he pointedly turned his head to stare at the tent wall like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

His thumb brushed once, absently, against her ribcage.

Odrian rolled his eyes dramatically, waving a hand as if swatting away her gratitude.

“Spare me,” he groaned, voice thick with disdain. “Next you’ll be weeping into my tunic and composing odes to my generosity.”

His fingers brushed her briefly as he took back the waterskin.“I’ll make sure they’re all in Mother Tongue,” Alessia said, her words slurring slightly as her energy flagged, but her grin remained mischievous, “Jus’ t’be annoyin’.”

Odrian gasped, clutching his chest like she had lodged a knife in it, and whirled on Dionys.

“Did you hear that? Straight to threats!” A grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “This is how she repays us. Vile street-slang odes.”

Dionys snorted, inelegant and undignified. His grip on Alessia remained steady, but his stern facade wavered for just a moment.

“Tragic.”

With the faintest upward twitch of his lips, he added, “I’ll take first watch. You can suffer through the odes when she’s conscious enough to compose them properly.”

Alessia chuckled, snuggling closer to him unconsciously.

“Y’make an unreasonably comfortable pillow, by the way,” she muttered as she fell back asleep. “Thassa compliment.”

Dionys stilled, a statue carved from startled annoyance and reluctant fondness. His grip tightened just enough to let her know he was glaring at her, even if she couldn’t see it.

“I am not a pillow,” he informed the air above her head with grave dignity. “You don’t just declare things like that without the proper ceremony. Protocol.”

Dionys adjusted his arm to better support her head.

Odrian saw it. Dionys knew he saw it. They stared at one another, daring each other to say something about it until Stella, half-asleep against Alessia’s hip, mumbled.

“…Uncle Dio’s the best pillow…”

The silence that followed was absolute.

Dionys looked personally betrayed.

---

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The tent flap slammed open with the force of his shoulder. He was through the gap before the canvas could settle, his arms full of her, his chiton already plastered to his chest with her blood.

It drenched the wool of Odrian’s cloak, dripping from his elbows, smeared across her cheek where he tried to cradle her head.

He laid her down on his own bedroll, and his breath punched out of him at the sight of her in the lamplight. Pale. Wrong. The gash along her ribs was a wet, grinning mouth beneath the ruin of her tunic, pulsing crimson with every shallow, hitching breath. Her temple was swelling, purple-black, matted with blood that looked black in the dim light.

“Pressure,” he snarled. Not at Dionys. At his own hands as he tore off the ruined cloak and wadded it against her side. “I need… linen, water, anything… now—”

His eyes caught Dionys’s across the space. He had Stella pinned to his chest, the girl’s face turned toward Odrian and Alessia, and he watched her expression crumble. Watched her see the blood and recognize whose it was.

“Stella—” Odrian’s voice cracked. He pressed harder against Alessia’s ribs, feeling the wet warmth push back against his palm, and he leaned down close to her ear. “Stay here. You listen to me, Thief. You open your eyes right now, or I’ll have Dionys sew you to the bedroll, I swear to Athena—”

Alessia’s eyelashes fluttered, but she didn’t wake. She murmured something as her breath hitched.

Stella went rigid in Dionys’s arms, every muscle locking as the copper scent hit her, heavy and wrong. Her dark eyes fixed on Alessia’s pale face, on the black-red stain spreading beneath Odrian’s pressing hands, her small chest hitching with a sound that wasn’t quite a scream.

“Too much,” she whimpered, clutching Lieutenant Pebble so tight the jagged edges cut crescents into her palm. “That’s…that’s overflowing. You can’t sew that it’s… it’s everywhere…”

She thrashed, sudden and violent, a wildcat in a child’s body, kicking against Dionys’s chest. “Put me down! I need to—I have to hold her hand! She can’t find the mountain if nobody’s holding her hand!”

She broke free, or Dionys let her slip, and hit the ground running, stumbling on fever-weak legs. She skidded to her knees beside the bedroll, the impact jarring a sob from her throat, and stared at the blood soaking the wool. Her hand fluttered out, hovering over Alessia’s slack fingers, afraid to touch.

Afraid not to.

She shoved Lieutenant Pebble toward Odrian’s blood-slick hands with desperate, shaking force. “Here! Take it! It’s for fighting the dark! Make her take it, make her hold it! Please, she needs it to climb back up—”

Her words dissolved into hysterical hiccups as she grabbed Alessia’s limp hand with both of hers, pressing her feverish forehead against her mother’s cold knuckles.

“Mama? Mama, wake up. You have to wake up. You promised you’d drink the potion with me. Don’t leave me in the dark. Don’t leave me with the crabs.”

She looked up at Dionys, her face streaked with snot and tears, her voice dropping into a broken whisper. “Fix her. You have to. I’ll give you all my rocks. I’ll give you General Stonebelly. Just please don’t let her glow go out.”

Before Dionys could answer the tent flap erupted inward. Askarion filled the opening like a thundercloud, leather apron already tied, grey braid whipping behind him, field kit slung across his chest, bone needles and glass vials clattering together.

“Out of the way, you mewling infants,” he snarled, his voice rough as gravel rolling down a slope. He didn’t wait for permission, didn’t bow. He shoved past Odrian with a shoulder broadened by decades of hauling wounded men from battlefields. “Yes, yes, your Majesty is very heroic, now move before you drown her in your incompetence.”

He dropped to his knees beside the bedroll with a grunt that suggested his own joints were held together by spite and linen wraps. His hands hovered over Alessia with the precision of a sculptor assessing marble.

They didn’t shake. They never did.

“Gut wound.” He ripped the blood-soaked wad of cloak from Odrian’s hands in one motion, peeling back the ruined tunic to expose the gash along her rib. “Shallow, thank the gods. Missed her liver by a finger’s width. But she’s bled out three cups already, maybe four.”

He probed the edges of the wound with two fingers, ignoring the fresh welling of blood, his eyes narrowing at the rib beneath. Then his other hand was in her hair, rough and swift, parting the matted locks to inspect the temple injury. His thumb brushed the swelling, pressing once against the skull, and he grunted.

“Concussion. Bad one. No depression in the bone, so her brain isn’t leaking out her ears yet.” He looked up at Odrian with eyes like flint. “But she will be if you keep kneeling there like a shocked calf. Boiling water. Now. And you—” He jabbed a finger at Dionys without looking, his attention already back on Alessia’s pale face. “Hold that child quiet. If she screams while I’m stitching, I’ll stitch her lips together.”

He reached into his kit and withdrew a curved bone needle already threaded with gut, and a small clay vial of something that smelled sharp and chemical. He uncorked it with his teeth.

“This will hurt her. She’ll buck. Someone hold her legs—gently, you oxen, she’s not a pig for slaughter.”

The tent flap lifted again with a soft rustle. Patrian ducked inside, field kit balanced against his hip, and he took the scene in with one sweeping glance.

As bad as the runners said.

“Askarion,” he murmured, his voice pitched low to cut through the panic without adding to it. “If you threaten to stitch a child’s lips together one more time, I’ll tell Aurelis you’ve been bullying war-orphans again. You know how he gets.”

He crossed to Stella in two strides, dropping to his knees so he was eye level with her. Not towering, not commanding, just present. His hands were empty, palm up, showing her the old needle-cuts on his fingertips.

“Stella, isn’t it?” he kept his gaze on hers, steady, letting her see that he wasn’t afraid of the blood or her fury. “I’m Patrian. I heal people. And I need you to do something brave for me.”

He nodded toward Alessia’s limp hand, still clutched in Stella’s grip. “Keep holding her fingers. Not tight enough to break, just enough that she feels you. Can you do that?”

He glanced up at Askarion, catching his eye with a look that said I’ve got the child, you’ve got the body. Work fast. Then, softer, to Stella, “She’s still here, Stella. Help her stay.”

He reached into his kit, slow and deliberate, and withdrew a small vial of honeyed poppy syrup. “You drink this—it tastes like sunshine, I promise—and you hold her hand, and you tell her about General Stonebelly’s latest tactical victory.”

He looked toward Odrian, a flash of dry humor in his brown eyes despite the horror around them. “Your Majesty, you’re hovering. Either assist Askarion by pressing there,” he pointed to a spot near the wound, “or fetch the boiling water he’s bellowing about. Choose quickly, she’s losing ground while we stand around playing statues.”

He turned to Askarion, positioning himself to brace Alessia’s shoulders, ready to hold her when the suturing began. “I’ll keep her head steady. You close the ribs. Try not to curse so loudly; the child’s already terrified enough without learning your full vocabulary.”

“Aurelis can kiss my wrinkled ass,” Askarion grunted, already threading gut through the bone needle. “And you can stop flapping your pretty lips and hold her head steady, Physician, before I demonstrate exactly how creative I can get with my vocabulary on your ear.”

He didn’t look up. The blood’s rhythm was wrong, too fast, too eager to leave her body. He slapped Odrian’s hand away from the wound, not unkindly, just efficient, and pressed his own palm hard against the gush, feeling for the rib beneath the slick mess.

“Here,” he snapped at the Otharan king, jabbing his elbow toward the water skin Patrian brought. “Pour. Wash the grit out before I sew dirt into her liver. And you—” he turned to Dionys, who still had Stella half-pinned. “—shift your weight to her hips. She’ll buck when the needle hits bone, and if she twists while I’m suturing, I’ll nip her lung. Then we’re burying her at dawn.”

He waited for the water’s sting then probed the gap with his thumb. Shallow, yes, but ragged. Torn by bronze, not cut clean. He hitched a breath, muttering something filthy in old Thesari about the idiot sentry who did this, and drove the needle in.

─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─

The world swam back into focus in fragments. Blurred shadows, the smell of copper and bitter herbs, a crushing weight against her ribs that throbbed in sickening time with her heartbeat.

She tried to sit up, but the tent tilted violently, and she collapsed back with a wet gasp.

“St’lla?” The name comes out mangled, her tongue thick and clumsy, tasting of copper. “Where’s… where’s m’daughter?”

She blinked, trying to clear her double vision. Panic spiked in her chest as she noticed the two men nearby were strangers with healer’s hands and unreadable faces. Not Odrian. Not Dionys.

“Who… Who’re you?” she slurred, eyes darting between them. Her hand flailed, searching for something solid, finding only sticky warmth. Her blood, drying on the bedroll. “I had… had th’ medicine. From th’ healer. For St’lla… th’ glow’s goin’ out…”

She struggled to push herself up on her elbows, but the room spun, her head and ribs screaming in protest. A white-hot lance of pain behind her eyes that made her retch.

“Did I… did I get it? Th’ clay jar? Please… please tell me I didn’ drop it… she needs… needs t’drink it…”

Her gaze locked onto Patrian, younger, with gentler eyes, and she grabbed at his sleeve with desperate, blood-sticky fingers. “D’you have th’… th’ potion? I promis’d her… nose-touch promis’d… I’d bring it back…”

Odrian presses his palm hard against her shoulder, pinning her gently but firmly to the bedroll.

“Stop.” The word comes out ragged, stripped of theater. “Stop moving. Stop apologizing, stop trying to climb out of your own skin to check on her, She’s right there, and she’s breathing, and if you tear these stitches, I swear by Athena and all her owls, I will personally strap you to this bedroll and feed you broth like an infant until you heal properly.”

He leaned in closer, his forehead nearly touching hers, his voice dropping to a fierce, trembling whisper that only she could hear.

“You don’t owe me anything. Not coin, not thread, not your life spilled out in the dirt because some scared sentry with a spear couldn’t tell a desperate mother from a spy. The only thing you owe me is stillness. Rest. Let yourself be held together for once.”

His thumb brushed the hollow of her throat, feeling her pulse flutter wild and bird-fast against his skin. “And my cloak?” He barked a wet, humorless laugh. “It’s wool, Thief. It washes. Or it burns. I don’t care. I care that you’re still breathing, that you came back with a shattered jar and a cracked skull and still tried to crawl to her. That’s the only currency that matters here.”

He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes, forcing her to see him past the concussion and the pain.

“Stella’s safe. You kept your promise. Now let me keep mine. Let me guard your flank while you heal. Just… just stay, Alessia. Please.”

Patrian moved with the river-calm he had perfected over years of battlefield triage, one hand pressed firmly against Alessia’s shoulder to keep her from trying to rise again. His other hand caught her wandering wrist, feeling the pulse there.

Too fast, thready, but steady enough for now.

“Stay down, brave mother,” he murmured, voice low and level, cutting through the slur of her panic. “You’re concussed, bleeding, and currently leaking Dionys’s excellent sutures onto what is, admittedly, a very expensive wool rug. So unless you’d like me to sedate you with poppy milk—which will make you sleep for six hours and miss Stella waking up—you’ll lie still and listen.”

He reached for a fresh linen pad, pressing it against the fresh seep of blood at her side with practiced efficiency, his fingers checking the tension of Askarion’s stitches as he worked.

“I’m Patrian. I gave your daughter the honey-syrup. Her fever broke, she’s breathing easy. The jar breaking didn’t kill her, but you getting gutted like a fish did nearly kill you, so let’s focus.”

He leaned in, brown eyes steady and warm, catching her glassy gaze and holding it. “You kept your promise. She drank. She’s safe. Now you stop apologizing for bleeding on royalty and let me look at your eyes. Follow my finger. No, don’t nod, just look.”

He held up a blood-stained finger, moving it slowly side to side, watching for the tracking, for the dilation, for any sign of the brain bleed they’d all been dreading.

The tent tilted. Sideways, upside-down, snapping back to something resembling upright with a lurch that made her stomach heave. She swallowed hard, tasting copper and bile, and forced her eyes to track Patrian’s finger.

Left. Right. Left again.

It hurt to focus, like squinting into blinding sunlight, but she did it because they keep asking things of her and she can barely remember her own name.

Stella’s safe.

The words echo, hollow and precious, but guilt gnaws sharper than the needle in her ribs. Safe because strangers stepped in where she failed. Because she broke the jar, fell in the dirt, bled out while Stella waited alone.

“The cloak,” she mumbled again, because her tongue wouldn’t obey anything more complicated and the wool was soft and it smelled like Odrian. Sea salt and camp smoke and something warm she couldn’t name. And she ruined it. “S’blue. Like… like the sky in her sto- stories. Little Star’s sky. Didn’ mean t’…”

Askarion’s hand slapped her shoulder, not kind but there, and Alessia flinched before relaxing into the grounding of it.

He was angry. They were all angry, or worried, or both, and Alessia couldn’t parse which, couldn’t do anything but lie there leaking and apologizing for things that weren’t sorry-worthy.

“Jus’…dizzy,” she slurred again, even though they had already established that and she’s repeating herself. “Thought I could get back…” 

Her hand fluttered toward the empty space where Stella should be, where Alessia needs her to be, where she can feel her pulse against her palm and know she’s real. “Wanna see… wanna hold…”

The words dissolved into something incoherent even to Alessia. She turned her head, looking past the way the tent spun, and found Dionys in the corner, Stella a warm weight against his chest, her dark curls rumpled with sleep. She was breathing. Alessia could see the rise and fall, even doubled in her vision. Even blurred around the edges.

“Nose-touch,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone, the vow she made in the dark before the world went sideways.  “Promis’d. Kept it. She kep’ hers too… m’brave girl…”

Her eyes fluttered closed, too heavy to hold open, but she fought it. Fought the pull of poppy milk they were threatening, fought the dark mountain looming in her periphery where Little Star was still climbing, still reaching for a sky she couldn’t see.

Odrian’s hand was on her jaw again, warm and solid, and she leaned into it without meaning to, too tired for pride.

“Sorcerers,” she mumbled, lips barely shaping the words, a broken laugh catching wet in her chest. “Two of ‘em. Fancy. Thieves don’ rate… two Sorcerers…”

The darkness rose like tide water and she let it take her. Trusting, for once, that the wall would hold without her pressed against it.

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